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October 12, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: fourth seat

[The following piece of writing predates this blog. Like this other piece, it's adapted from something I had originally written for the addictive marvel of chaos that is Everything2.com.]

fourth seat./forthseet/. (chiefly Mumbai) The fourth person to sit on a seat built to seat three people. This term is used to refer to the unlucky person who gets to seat half their ass when traveling on a local train, Mumbai's term for its commuter railway. It is the commuting equivalent of a third wheel.

Mumbai's local trains serve areas that lie as far as 60 km away from the city center. They are filled woefully beyond capacity, even during non-rush hours. The sheer number of commuters on these local trains at all hours means that you can pretty much count on not having a seat when you travel. When you do get a chance to sit, you frequently end up as the fourth seat.

The fourth seat is an ignominious position indeed. You have to constantly push the seated half of your ass against the three others that rightfully belong on that seat and feel bad for doing so. At the same time, a nagging doubt gnaws on the corner of your soul as you wonder if you're really better off for putting in all this effort.

Homophobes make for worse fourth seats, because Mumbai's local trains have sex-segregated carriages. Then again, personal space is not nearly as big an issue in India as it is in the United States or elsewhere in the West.

[A much more detailed account—thanks, Tapan!—is available, complete with descriptions of the resulting circulatory impairment and other phenomena unique to Mumbai's local trains.]

Posted by Vishy at October 12, 2006 10:51 PM

Comments

Posted by: tapan at October 19, 2006 02:38 PM